Women and Catalans stopped the victory of the two rights in the elections on July 23. Women, Catalans, Basques, Navarrese, Andalusians, Asturians, Valencians and people from all over Spain raised the electoral ground of the PSOE in the last week of the campaign, pushed Sumar above thirty deputies and denied Narciso Michavila, effective commander of the demoscopic narrative that predicted an unappealable victory for the conservative bloc. Between July 1 and 17, 105 polls were published in Spain and the vast majority of them predicted an absolute majority of PP and Vox.
It is time for post-electoral studies. There was a last-minute mobilization in favor of the left-wing coalition, with two special pulls: that of the women and that of the Catalans. We are talking about two vectors of a different nature. Obviously, the Catalan electoral reaction – a useful vote of the independence movement for the PSC – was also influenced by the women’s mobilization.
Before the post-electoral study of the Center for Sociological Research (CIS) was released this week, one of the first analysts to underline the decisive role of women in the recent general elections was the political scientist Juan José Domínguez, a professional in the analysis of public opinion, especially active in social networks, who nailed the election result to his private estimates, released on Twitter days before 23-J. According to Domínguez, Pedro Sánchez managed to attract the vote of 750,000 women who in the previous generals had supported other formations, with a notable contingent of ex-voters from Ciudadanos and the Popular Party.
Half a million votes could have reached Sánchez from women who chose the PP ballot in the regional and municipal elections on May 28. Middle-class women, with a medium and high income level, between the ages of 40 and 60, mostly residing in cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants, defenders of abortion and policies against gender violence. Women alarmed by the political and ideological orientation of Vox and confused by the deliberate ambiguity of Alberto Núñez Feijóo. Women who at some point felt represented by María Guardiola, the loquacious leader of the PP from Extremadura who initially resisted agreeing with Vox, until she was told to silence her from Madrid. The ephemeral Guardiola line could have saved Núñez Feijóo.
They, more red than blue. They, more blue than red. This is how the political scientist Víctor Lapuente described the asymmetry in an article published this week in the newspaper El País with data from Metroscopia, a company founded by the veteran sociologist José Juan Toharia. Among women, the vote for the left surpassed the right by 1.1 million, while the advantage of the right over the left among men would have been 1.5 million, according to Metroscopia.
These data are perfectly supported by the CIS post-electoral study, released last Thursday, in which the inclination of the female electorate to the left in these elections is evident. At the end of the campaign, 38% of women preferred Sánchez to be president, compared to 28.2% who indicated Núñez Feijóo. Ten points ahead. Among men, 33.9% preferred Sánchez and 29.2% Feijóo.
The CIS post-election report establishes that the Popular Party candidate lost steam during the second week of the campaign. He made the serious mistake of not attending the four-way debate organized by Televisión Española and arrived on July 23 almost melted. There was never a Feijóo effect. Yes, a strong drive for a conservative vote, with powerful media support.
The change of slope of the second week, especially the female electoral mobilization, went almost unnoticed in the dominant information circuits in the city of Madrid, a pressure cooker in Spain. In Madrid DF, the effective narrative of Michavila dominated, very active in the media playing the role of alternative CIS.
One hundred and five surveys in seventeen days –almost all in the same direction– and an extraordinary media cannon, which brought together the majority of the newspapers published in the capital of Spain, private television stations, various radio stations, headed by the episcopal chain, a good handful of digital publications and very incisive commands on social networks, managed to create the perception of an unappealable victory for the PP-Vox front. At the end of the electoral campaign, despite leading the preferences, only 32% of Spaniards believed that Sánchez could repeat as Prime Minister. Madrid DF created a huge opinion bubble.
The other pull occurred in Catalonia. It’s no mystery, just look at the results. The Catalan vote has once again been decisive, as it already happened in the general elections of 2004 and 2008, this time with a curious added phenomenon: the abstentionism defended by some sectors of the independence movement, angry with the world, ended up benefiting the PSC in the distribution of seats. The promoters of that campaign believed that it was a master move to put ERC and Junts in crisis.
The French sociologists from the Cluster17 company saw it live in their latest polls. Cluster17 has followed the Spanish campaign with the same method used in the French presidential elections and in the latest Italian legislative elections: segmenting the electorate into affinity groups. They identified 16 clusters or groups. This newspaper published the report and had a great impact. (See La Vanguardia of June 25, 2023).
French analysts have observed in recent days how the groups most impregnated by the Catalan independence movement have moved towards the useful vote. “We detected the trend towards a useful vote in favor of Sánchez at the beginning of the campaign, but it accelerated among the independentistas in recent days, very visibly in Esquerra Republicana and to a lesser extent in Junts,” explains Lenny Benbara from Paris.
What was the trigger? Santiago Abascal and his forceful affirmation that with Vox in the Government the tension in Catalonia would increase. The Mazón line (the preferential pact with Vox was inaugurated in the Valencian Community) scared women. Abascal’s radicalization in the face of adverse polls finished manufacturing the Catalan result. Here are two important keys of July 23.
The blue summer has turned into a summer of white umbrellas, in which the future has yet to be written.
